Teaching

I was a teaching assistant for Drama 101 Introduction to Theatre at UW Seattle. As a VLPA course, often my classes were a diverse group with majors including physical sciences, mathematics, business, pre-law, humanities and even a few art students. I learned that in order for my classroom best serve each student, I needed to find ways to present the material in a much more interdisciplinary way focusing on individual modes of learning. My goal in working with UWB's IAS is continue searching for ways to make my subject, the art of theatre, much more relevant to others.

I recently taught workshops on the history of acting for the Seattle Children's Theatre's Young Actor Institute. For UW, I taught Drama 201 Introduction to Script Analysis. My students learned how to approach a script from the point of view of a director mindful that theatre only happens in the production of it, not in the scripting of it. I taught a summer session of Drama 101 where we did hands-on group projects. And of course, I was a teaching assistant for 2 years for Drama 101. I have also been a Drama School intern at the Seattle Children's Theatre and assisted in many courses there.

Research/Scholarship

The focus of my dissertation is on how certain contemporary Chicano playwrights are reinterpreting, shifting and making relevant ancient Greek and Aztec-based mythology in their work. I am interested in the way these plays become Brechtian in their use of Epic theatre to create critical audiences. I am studying Cherríe Moraga's The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea, Luis Alfaro's Electricidad, and Luis Valdez's The Mummified Deer. I am primarily looking at each show in production.

I have one review of a production of The Hungry Woman at Brown University in progress with Ollantay Theatre Journal and another article under consideration for publication in an anthology of work on Medea, mutation and permutation of the myth. I regularly attend academic conferences such as American Society for Theatre Research, International Federation for Theatre Research, Comparative Drama, and the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association of which I am the area chair for the Chicana/o Literature, Film and Culture area.